Tens of thousands of people are born each year with congenital defects of the heart. Some of the more common types of congenital cardiac defects include atrial septal defect (ASD), ventricular septal defect (VSD), and patent ductus arteriosis (PDA). An ASD is a hole in the cardiac septum between the left and right atria, while a VSD is a hole in the septum between the left and right ventricles. Patent ductus arteriosis is incomplete closure of the opening between the pulmonary artery and the aorta that is present during fetal development. These conditions may cause blood to abnormally shunt from the right side of the heart to the left side of the heart without being properly oxygenated in the lungs, so that the body tissues supplied by the blood are deprived of oxygen. In addition, blood in the left side of the heart may shunt back to the right side through the defect rather than being pumped into the arterial system, causing abnormal enlargement of the right chambers of the heart.
ASD's, VSD's and PDA can frequently be surgically repaired with significant success. Smaller defects may be reparable by simply suturing the defect closed, while larger defects may require a patch of polyester, expanded polytetrafluoroethylene, or a portion of the patient's own pericardium to be sutured into the heart to cover and occlude the defect.
Ordinarily, such surgery is performed using open-chest techniques while the heart is under cardioplegic arrest and circulation is maintained by cardiopulmonary bypass. Using such techniques, a gross thoracotomy is created in order to gain access to the heart and great vessels, facilitating clamping and cannulation of the aorta for inducing cardioplegic arrest, and allowing instruments to be introduced into the chest cavity and into the heart to perform the surgical repair. The necessity of stopping the heart significantly heightens the risks attendant such procedures, particularly the risks of causing ischemic damage to the heart muscle, and of causing stroke or other injury due to circulatory emboli produced by aortic clamping and vascular cannulation. In addition, the creation of a gross thoracotomy produces significant morbidity and mortality, lengthens hospital stay and subsequent recovery, increases costs, and worsens the pain and trauma suffered by the patient. Moreover, many congenital defects are repaired in children under the age of ten years for whom the morbidity and mortality of open-chest surgery and cardioplegic arrest can be even greater than for older patients.
In an effort to avoid the necessity of grossly opening the chest and stopping the heart, a number of intravascular devices have been developed for repair of ASD's, VSD's, and PDA. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,388 to King et al. discloses an intravascular delivery catheter introduced intraluminally from a peripheral vein into the right side of the heart which can be used to position an artificial umbrella-like patch across a septal defect and to anchor the patch to the cardiac septum. Other intravascular delivery devices and artificial patches for the repair of septal defects can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,334,217, U.S. Pat. No. 5,284,488, U.S. Pat. No. 4,917,089, U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,743, and PCT Application No. PCT/US92/10141.
While intravascular approaches to the repair of congenital defects may provide certain advantages, the most significant of which is the elimination of the need for gross thoracotomy and cardioplegic arrest, these techniques have suffered from a number of problems. One such problem is the difficulty in manipulating the artificial patches into position across a defect using only the proximal end of a long and flexible delivery catheter positioned through a tortuous right lumen. Also problematic is the inadequacy of fixation of endovascularly-placed patches, creating a tendency of such patches to migrate or embolize after placement, which can allow blood to again shunt through the defect. In addition, once such a patch has been placed and the delivery catheter detached from the patch, relocating and repositioning the patch with the catheter is difficult, if not impossible, and may require open surgical correction. Moreover, in young children, the size of the peripheral vessels is extremely small, and damage to such vessels could have serious effects upon the growth of the child. Thus, the size of the devices which can be introduced through such vessels is greatly limited.
In addition to ASD, VSD, and PDA, various other types of cardiac disease also may be diagnosed and treated by intervention within the interior chambers of the heart. For example, some cardiac arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardias, supraventricular tachycardias, and atrial fibrillation, may be diagnosed by obtaining access into an interior chamber of the heart and by performing electrophysiological mapping to identify abnormal conduction pathways. Once these abnormal conduction pathways are identified, in some cases the disease may be treated by ablating selected cardiac tissue using radiofrequency (RF) energy or a medical laser to eliminate the abnormal pathways. A number of endovascular approaches have been developed which attempt to allow intracardiac mapping and ablation using catheters introduced transluminally from peripheral vessels into the heart. Such devices are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,960,134, 4,573,473, 4,628,937, and 5,327,889. However, endovascular mapping and ablation devices suffer from many of the same problems suffered by endovascular septal defect repair devices, including a lack of control and precise positionability from the proximal end of these highly flexible and elongated devices, the significant size constraints of peripheral vessels, and the inability to position the devices in all potentially diseased sites within the heart.
What are needed, therefore, are devices and methods to enable the repair of ASD, VSD, PDA, and other congenital defects, as well as cardiac arrhythmias and other diseases of the heart, which eliminate the need for gross thoracotomy and cardioplegic arrest, but which overcome the forementioned problems with intravascular techniques. The devices and methods should facilitate a high level of control for precise manipulation within the heart. The devices and methods should produce a septal defect or PDA repair which is reliable and long-lasting, and should not be susceptible to migration, embolization, or reopening of a defect. The devices and methods for septal defect and PDA repair should allow the position of a repair patch to be inspected after initial placement and to be repositioned if necessary. Finally, the devices and methods should not risk damaging the peripheral vessels of the patient, nor should the size and configuration of the devices be limited by the size of the patient's peripheral vessels.